10.5” 14 bolt disk brakes with OEM park brakes

[57taskforce]

I will soon be putting bigger tires under my K20. I’ve decided to swap to rear disks on my 14 Bolt. As we’ve all seen that there are several ways to put disk brakes on a full floating 10.5” 14 bolt. Most involve using pre fabricated weld on caliper brackets, with 73-87 K20 front rotors and a few different caliper options. While relatively inexpensive, the huge draw back to these setups is the huge lack of a reliable parking brake setup. The Cadillac Eldorado calipers are an option for the park brakes but they are not known to be overly strong or reliable for a truck application.

The following is a 14 bolt disk swap done my way using all off the shelf GM parts for the swap from a late model axle. There seems to be very little definitive info on this swap online, pirate has a thread or two and few of the other 4x4 sites do as well but they don’t contain the most clear info or pictures, more often than not the info I found online was mostly reasons it can’t be done. I didn’t use any internet info in this swap, I just got the axles sided by side and started building. I will outline in this thread how I pulled it off. This is not a direct bolt on swap, or likely even the most cost effective swap, but it will provide an effective park brake setup and brakes designed for an HD truck.
The axle I’m going to be installing the disks on came from an ‘89 V30 square body cab and chassis, it is the newer style housing with the extra ribbing in the center section of the housing. This axle had 13 inch inboard mounted drums.(more on slip off drums to come)

I acquired all my swap parts from a 2005 Silverado 2500HD 6.0 10.5” 14 bolt axle. Note that this information is only confirmed using the brake parts from the 3/4-1ton 6.0 non dually trucks with the 10.5” 14 bolt disk brake axle with drum in hat. The 11.5” 14 bolt that is found in duallys and duramax/8.1 trucks is not the same axle as the 10.5” we all know and love. The 10.5” axle is still produced today by AAM and is 90% the same as the original from 1973. The major differences in the modern axles are the widths, spindles, hubs, and brakes.

Here’s a picture of the complete ‘05 disk axle before tear down. I don’t have any of the cab and chassis axle before I tore into it, but anyone reading this has likely seen many 14 bolts with drum brakes.